


Palm Reading for Dummies

by prettyasadiagram



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:30:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyasadiagram/pseuds/prettyasadiagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles puts his new palm reading skills to use and Derek learns of his future as a lakeside property owner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Palm Reading for Dummies

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to thatdamneddame for encouraging this tiny tiny piece of self-indulgent fic.

“Can I read your palm?”

Derek looks up and frowns at the solemn expression on Stiles’s face. He’d felt it when Stiles had walked up behind him in the kitchen, felt the weight of Stiles’s stare and had struggled not to tense or give himself away, but apparently what he’d thought was good natured creeping was actually going to be a _thing_.

Stiles comes and sits at the table, smiles tightly at Derek and steals his mug before grimacing when he tastes how sweet the tea is, but he doesn’t say anything else.

It’s unnatural, so Derek gives in first, “What?”

“It’s just, Deaton has been teaching me, you know, stuff, and I thought I could practice?”

Derek doesn’t need werewolf hearing to know that Stiles is lying. It’s in the flickering of his eyes, the licking of his lips; but hearing the jump-thud of his heart speeding up is just confirmation. “Stuff?”

“He showed me how to read palms. He read mine and it was…uncanny.”

There’s a long pause while Derek watches Stiles shift in the chair, but Derek has never denied Stiles anything, so he sticks out his hand, palm up, and waits.

Stiles takes a deep breath, and Derek wonders what Stiles hopes (or fears) that he’ll find. 

//

Derek had his palm read once before at a fair. There were too many people and too many smells, but Laura had begged for cotton candy and the twins had cried for funnel cakes, and Derek had always been a pushover for family.

Laura had shoved him into a gypsy tent with a five dollar bill clutched in his hand, said to entertain himself while they went on the Ferris wheel, and when he’d tried to back out, the tiny wrinkled woman said, “Sit.”

And Derek sat.

//

The silence is growing and Derek bites his tongue to stop himself from rushing Stiles, but it’s worth it when Stiles trails a light finger down what he calls “the heart line.” He says softly, “It runs deep, means you love deep and you love hard, but it splits, means you’ve had heartache.”

Derek is grateful when Stiles doesn’t look up, doesn’t offer any platitudes or snarky comments; he doesn’t want to see understanding, or worse, pity, in Stiles’s eyes.

“The head line is next. Yours is intersected in multiple places, means big decisions in your past and more to come, but it has a strong beginning, so you have the brains to back it up—you just need to use them—,” 

When Stiles starts to laugh, Derek cuts him off with a half-hearted growl.

//

The tent had smelled like incense and wax and faintly like caramel, the woman not saying anything at first, just holding out her hand expectantly. 

When he placed the money in her hand, she had given him this disparaging look before gripping his hand and pulling him closer. 

She looked closely, ran a calloused hand over his palm, before curling his fingers back around his money. With a scratchy voice, she had asked, “I see two outcomes—your question?”

Derek had froze, thinking of about the new student teacher, her quicksilver smile and her bright eyes, before he said, “Will I be happy?”

The woman grated out a bitter laugh and said, “There is pack and love and warmth in your future, yes, but—,”

And then Laura had dragged him out of the tent, calling an apology of her shoulder, and he forgot about his shock at the term _pack_ , forgot about his half-told fortune in favor of defending his share of the funnel cake. 

//

Apparently his life line shows promise, points to a bright future with a high possibility of stability, and, according to Stiles, fun times in many different positions. 

He’s just starting to relax when Stiles sucks in a breath as he traces another line on Derek’s palm and says, “Your fate line splits.” 

Derek thinks about that carnival and that old woman, her dim eyes and her wizened hands. He thinks about how she never finished his fortune, and he wonders if somewhere out there, there’s a Derek who heard the second half of that fortune and didn’t stay after class to help the student teacher clean up; if there’s a Derek running around the woods with his siblings, howling and nipping at each other’s heels. He wonders if there’s a universe where he didn’t destroy his family. 

Stiles doesn’t elaborate, other than “This isn’t an exact science, you know.”

From the tension in Stiles’s shoulders, Derek thinks it might be closer to that than Stiles will say.

When Stiles says, “Oh,” with a tone of wonder in his voice, Derek focuses.

“Oh?” 

“Oh.” Stiles says definitively. “According to this line, you’re going to live by a lake.” And then he spits on Derek’s palm. 

Derek freezes. He looks up. Stiles’s shoulders are shaking, his cheeks are flushed, and he gasps with laughter until Derek growls, “Stiles…,” and then he fairly howls.

When Derek moves to wipe his hand on Stiles’s thigh, Stiles smiles brightly and takes off running out of the kitchen.

A smile plays around Derek’s mouth; he loves a good chase.

**Author's Note:**

> True fact: This is pretty much how my brief career as a palm reader went. I was eight.
> 
> Please do not repost this work in its entirety or share this work on third-party websites such as Goodreads.


End file.
